ukdodger wrote:The numbers taking part are considerable yet it's always the same dozen or so that win.

Keep watching. The breaks don’t usually stay away, but they stay away often enough to make it worth a gamble.

I suspect there's fewer different stage winners in a Tour de France than a Giro or Vuelta, as more of the sprinters' teams bring their top squads (because the mountains aren't usually as harsh at eliminating sprinters and lead-out men as in the other races), which usually reduces a stage to probably one of the top 3 sprinters of a given year, and there's also pressure for a Yellow Jersey winner to win a stage else they get criticised. Despite that, the last two Tours had 14 and 17 different stage winners if I'm counting correctly.

I don't think anybody has mentioned the Prix de la combativité (aggressive rider prize) which entitles the day's winner of this competition to wear the red race number the following day. In addition to the camera time during the stage, there's also a prominent place in the day's results. Van Kiersbulck's mugshot is here with those of all the jersey wearers:-

Once upon a time, this competition was decided by a vote of the accredited journalists. Afaik, it's now simply calculated with the transponders to measure who was out in front longest. One rider away most of the day = no problem, but if there's a group, that system measures who does most of the work so there's a real incentive to be on the front, where most riders don't want to be. OTOH, it doesn't measure things like who organises anything in the way of a chase etc., when not actually in the lead on the road.

That link didn't mention the pioneering British rider, Brian Robinson who won TdeF stages in 1958 (beaten in the sprint by Padovan who was disqualified) and in 1959 when he won a stage by 20+ minutes. AFAIK, Padovan was second that day too, but with the much bigger margin. (I was going to link to Brian Robinson's wiki entry, but I'm pretty sure it's wrong: IIRC, his second stage win was after he had finished outside the time limit and been reinstated. Part of the reason he was allowed the 20 minute lead was that after losing all that time, he was no longer a threat on GC.)

In those pre-television days and with longer stages, parts of the race were ridden at much slower speeds, only speeding up towards the end. On a promenade stage, the main field sometimes didn't bother to speed up. Television has changed things and I fancy that now we have coverage from start to finish, there'll be ever more action from the start. I suspect that this will reinforce the need for shorter stages.

Look up Jacky Durand - lots of breakaways, and occasionally they worked.

The best example is Oscar Pereiro. Allowed to get away by miles in the 2006 TdF - by which time it was too late. He ended up in yellow for a few days, and retrospectively was awarded the Tour outright as Floyd Landis was disqualified for doping.

I've just finished 'Shut Up Legs!' by Jens Voigt, in it he mentions that breakaway in the 2006 tour, he won the stage. In it he mentions one of his mottoes, taught to him by his old team-mate, Chris Boardman, "If you try to win, you might lose, but if you don't try to win, you lose for sure!"

If you only got a ‘tete de la course’ timer at each points line (just a simple timer saying when the lead rider passed that line) then the riders would have to be much more alert and make judgement more important...

A shortcut has to be a challenge, otherwise it would just be the way.No situation is so dire that panic cannot make it worse.There are two kinds of people in this world: those can extrapolate from incomplete data.

[XAP]Bob wrote:Does the current data glut and team radio make it less interesting?

If you only got a ‘tete de la course’ timer at each points line (just a simple timer saying when the lead rider passed that line) then the riders would have to be much more alert and make judgement more important...

Surely it makes it less interesting, but I think the genie is rather out of the bottle on a lot of races. Stopping a rider getting more information from team cars, feed zones, spectators with an eye on the race coverage on their phones etc. on something like a Grand Tour would be very difficult.

On the other hand, it makes it all the sweeter when the peloton gets it worng!

Postboxer wrote:I've just finished 'Shut Up Legs!' by Jens Voigt, in it he mentions that breakaway in the 2006 tour, he won the stage. In it he mentions one of his mottoes, taught to him by his old team-mate, Chris Boardman, "If you try to win, you might lose, but if you don't try to win, you lose for sure!"

Jens Voigt:"I know plenty of riders who retired early, they wondered later: "what if I had kept racing?" I do not ask myself that, at the end of my career every fibre of my body was screaming "STOP!" (from memory, translated from German)

He got some more energy after that, he everested on the Teufelsberg in Berlin, +8848!

cyle racing is queer, one can win a prize for being the most aggressive

Any more Denglish quotes by JV?

Entertainer, kidult, curmudgeonCycling-of course, but it is far better on a GillottWe love safety cameras, we dislike mortons

Samuel D wrote:Innumerable things affect the tactics, so each stage plays out in a new way, with its own stories and risks and opportunities. This is what makes cycling so interesting to watch.

Not to mention that different riders and teams have different objectives (win the overall, win the points jersey, get lots of stage wins, get exposure for the sponsor by being at the front/in the break a lot, and so on), so it's like bridge and distance running combined, with a bit of the lottery thrown in for good measure. Nothing else is like it.

http://www.azquotes.com/author/46203-Jens_Voigt includes "If you go (with a break), you can either win or not win. If you don't go for it, you definitely won't win" and "After 120 kilometers my body said, ‘ooh, ooh Jens! What were you thinking?’" as well as some rather shameful words towards Betsy Andreu...

http://www.azquotes.com/author/46203-Jens_Voigt includes "If you go (with a break), you can either win or not win. If you don't go for it, you definitely won't win" and "After 120 kilometers my body said, ‘ooh, ooh Jens! What were you thinking?’" as well as some rather shameful words towards Betsy Andreu...

+1JV comes from Dassow not far from me, a road is named after him

Entertainer, kidult, curmudgeonCycling-of course, but it is far better on a GillottWe love safety cameras, we dislike mortons